Letters, flats or packages (mail entities) go through a number of human and equipment processing steps before they enter the postal stream. For instance, some of the steps for preparing mail entities are printing the address on the face of the mail entities, inserting sheets of paper into the mail entities, printing proof payment and indications for selected services (e.g., confirmation of delivery). Some of the steps for inducting mail entities into the mail stream involve presorting based on destination and placing mail entities in postal trays to obtain postal discounts.
After mail is inducted into the postal stream, then the mail entities are scanned to lift the image of the face of the mail entities for processing. The processing includes the detection of various areas of interest like Destination Address Block (DAB), Special Marks Block (SMB), Return Address Block, etc. Within each area of interest specialized software and hardware analyzes the image to capture the text or various values indicative of preferences and information conveyed by the sender to the post. Examples are destination address, services requested, proof of payment information, etc.
During the processing of mail entities a variety of defects may occur. For example, during image capture, information recognition and interpretation the address may not be read correctly because the printing of the address is smudged, the font used to print the address is not recognized by the optical character recognition (OCR) equipment, or the position of the address is in an incorrect location, etc. The address may also be skewed with respect to the bottom and top edges of the mail entities, or the line spacing of the address may not permit OCR equipment to read the address. Furthermore, the address may simply be incorrect.
Typically it takes the post three to five days to deliver letters and/or packages to a recipient. Thus the sender of mail entities may decide to track the progress of the mail entities through the postal processing system. The defects cause the post to use manual labor to correctly process the mail entities in the presence of defects, for example using human judgment to identify the destination address that cannot be recognized using automated equipment. In most cases, the aforementioned defects are noticed by the post and are not conveyed back to the mailer. Thus, the mailer is unaware of the difficulties encountered by the post in processing mail entities from this particular mailer, hence the mailer continues to create mail entities containing the same defects resulting in additional cost of mail processing for the post. This also causes continued delays in the delivery of the mail and eventually dissatisfaction of the mailer, the post and mail recipients.
One of the problems of the prior art is that there is no feedback from the post to the mailer regarding defects in the preparation of the mail entity that cause the post additional effort to process the mail.
Another problem of the prior art is that defects in the preparation of mail entities cause delays in the delivery of mail entities.
An additional problem of the prior art is that defects in the preparation of mail entities may be so severe that the post is unable to deliver the mail entity.
A further problem with the prior art is that the post was unable to determine whether or not the root cause of additional manual processing, delays or un-deliverability of mail entities was caused by postal equipment malfunction or by defects in the mailer's preparation of the mail entity.